EMQ » January–March 2021 » Volume 57 Issue 1
By John Thomas
Last fall, American missionary Matthew Smith (not his real name) and his international team comprised of himself, his wife, an American couple and several local believers, celebrated their 18,000th Bible study with Muslim seekers over the last two years in the Middle Eastern country where they serve. While Bible saturation on that scale is impressive in and of itself, especially in a closed country typically hostile to the gospel, what is perhaps most interesting is not the number of Bible studies, but the fact that all of them were initiated not by the various team members, but by the team’s automated chat bot.
Several years ago, after a friend who worked in marketing at a for-profit company shared how powerful a tool automated chat bots could be, Smith and his team decided to see if they could harness that power for reaching Muslims in the Middle East with the gospel.
“We had heard about people using Facebook to reach Muslims,” explains Smith,[1] “but we had never heard of anybody using chat bots [for ministry].” The idea appealed to Smith and his team for two reasons in particular. “First,” says Smith, “was that we were resource-low as far as people resources. Jesus said the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.”
Utilizing Chat Bots
By utilizing chat bots, Smith and his team are able to cast a much wider net and have a deeper impact. As each member is already at capacity, the chat bot is able to interact with dozens, even hundreds of seekers at a time, freeing up the real-life human missionaries for more face to face meetings – and with individuals who are more sincere in their search for truth. “We tell people that after fishing with nets we’d never go back to doing it by hand,” Smith affirms.
The second reason Smith and his team were so keen on the idea of implementing chat bots for the gospel, was because of their philosophy of technology. They see social media as a modern innovation akin to the Roman roads of the first century, which at the time were a cutting-edge network connecting people as never before and priming the Empire for rapid gospel spread.
This philosophy of internet outreach is coupled with a realism of who and how many in any given culture will be willing and able to change their religious affiliation initially. Added to these two factors is the missionaries’ prayerful expectation that God is about to start a gospel movement. The result is a ministry approach that is both data driven yet Spirit led.
How Chat Bots Work
The way the chat bots work is relatively simple. Smith and his team have set up numerous social media pages through which they run a variety of targeted ad campaigns on topics like spirituality or marriage. With the ads, the team is able to attract thousands to these pages where users are given the opportunity to opt in to receive a daily Bible reading and question from the chat bot. Smith has preprogrammed the bot to lead users down a digital gospel pathway, all the while encouraging them to obey what they are learning and share it with others.
One example of a passage the bot sends is Matthew 22:34-40, where Jesus proclaims the greatest commandment – to love God. After reading the verse, the user is sent the following question, “According to Jesus, which commandment is the most important?” along with four choices: “To love God. To work for God. To give Money. To Fast.”
While bringing truth in front of the eyes of more and more Muslim seekers is good, it is not the ultimate goal of the chat bots and how Smith and his team use them. In the words of Smith, the entire chat bot system actually is “a funnel.” From the 18,000 Bible studies that have been initiated by the chat bot over the last two years, only a small number have made it through to the end and the face-to-face meeting with real people who await them.
“Online ministries often take the fringe people, pulling them into this Christian bubble, which often creates secrecy that separates them from their natural community,” Smith explains. “Instead of that, we want to find the person who is already within their community and is wanting to share Jesus. How can we find that person whom we call Cornelius (from Acts 10)? How can we find Cornelius and help him reach his people group?” In this way, Smith and his team see these chat bots, and really the entire internet, not as a tool of persuasion, but as one of identification – essentially as a filter.
Other Examples
A few hundred miles away, in another Middle Eastern country, Mark Gartner (not his real name) and his team have been using their own version of the Smith team’s chat bots for several months with only a few differences. For example, Gartner’s bot tends to address felt needs more directly. The two chat bot systems work on the same principle: as a filter for finding people interested not only in Christ, but in sharing him with others from the beginning of their journey.
“I’m interested in finding people who are really interested,” explains Gartner.[2] “Spending hours meeting with people who aren’t really interested is really draining.” Like Smith, Gartner is just as enthusiastic about the potential for finding “Cornelius” people, or “persons of peace” as Gartner calls them.
“The bot is set up to find sharers,” Gartner explains. “As far as follow-up systems go this is much better. The contacts are of a far higher quality; some are ready to believe. One person shared with eight other people after his first meeting with a local believer. Another has already shared with his entire village.”
Related Questions
Not every chat bot system would necessarily have to be built this way. The fact that Smith and Gartner use the system to filter out contacts who aren’t willing to share arises more from their Disciple Making Movement (DMM) background, than from an inherent aspect of the technology. Smith explained that because they are pursuing a movement of many disciples, they have heavily prioritized their content and their offline follow-up towards finding people who are not only interested in following Jesus on their own, but also to opening the door to many in their community to follow Jesus.
“We had a lot of people we could have met with,” admits another team member, “but they didn’t seem like they wanted to share with others. We really focused all our resources on the Cornelius person. Some people might look at that and say, ‘you missed these opportunities to bring people into the Kingdom,’ but we’re trying to think long term.”
Assistant professor of Church History and Mission Studies at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Travis Myers, for one, has some questions about that particular use of the chat bots. “I don’t see anything wrong with the chat bot approach for exposing people to Scripture, nor do I think it necessarily wrong to prioritize with whom to meet (given good criteria),”[3] explains Myers, “but to refuse to meet at all with certain people because they don’t seem to have ‘catalyst’ is potential wrong. Isn’t 1 Timothy 2:4 true?”
Myers takes issue with the use of chat bots as funnels because it seems to make “the goal of a movement an ultimate value at the expense of what’s best for certain individuals.”
While Myers is in favor of the innovative approach to gospel proclamation, he wonders if focusing on sharers might potentially discount those who could become sharers once regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Myers sees this “undervaluing of the difference between a regenerate and unregenerate person,” as a problem; not with the chat bots, but with DMM as a strategy. “To strategize is wise,” stresses Myers, “but Scripture values the weak, the small, the oppressed, the forgotten, the surprising way of the cross, the death of a grain of wheat.”
Regarding DMM, another question that needs to be asked is whether or not the salvation of Cornelius and his family in Acts 10 is a normative pattern and goal? “(It’s) an issue of hermeneutics,” continues Myers. “Is the story of Cornelius and Peter at that unique and unrepeatable stage of redemptive history intended to prescribe this kind of strategy? No. To take similar opportunities as they arise is one thing, to eschew all others in the pursuit of only this (one) is quite another thing.”
Of course, as noted above, to utilize chat bots does not necessitate they be used as funnels or filters. The decision to use them in that way comes more from Smith and Gartner’s teams’ adherence to DMM principles and their desire to see movements of people coming to Christ. Conceivably, other teams using chat bots in other ways could skirt the entire issue by meeting with all who, through their interactions with the bots, express genuine interest in Christ – even if they do not fit the Cornelius mold.
Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary Professor of Mission and Global Christianity, Todd Johnson, takes less issue with the use of chat bots as filters for winnowing out all but the truly interested in Christ and in sharing, and sees it as a strategic way for a group with limited resources to reach their goals.
“I don’t think there is anything intrinsically wrong with using a filter,” explains Johnson.[4] “I think it’s done in less technological ways because people always have limited time and resources. You can’t really blame an organization for focusing. It’s fair for them to try to do the best they can with the resources they have.”
This goes back to Smith’s point that when they began their online outreach, they had to approach it as a group that was indeed resource-limited. Thus, perhaps the issue is a temporary one. Ideally, as more people come to faith through the work of the chat bots, there will be more “people” resources to meet with those who are interested in learning about the love of Christ. As one of Gartner’s teammates predicts, “the resources are in the harvest.”
Finally, one gets the sense that both Smith and Gartner’s teams are approaching the use of chat bots as a filter with a spirit of experimentation. They both admit they don’t have everything figured out yet but see great potential with this technology to cast a wide net for Christ. In fact, Gartner’s team has even begun to widen their “net” and reset some of the criteria in the chat bot system to allow for more meetings with those who might not be ready to share.
COVID-19 Application
Both Smith and Gartner also highlighted the value of the chat bots during a global pandemic. While for many face-to-face meetings have ceased to be a possibility, the chat bots are continuing to lead people in short Bible studies on a daily basis. Gartner’s team even reprogrammed their chat bot to address the fear and anxieties induced by the pandemic. As for Smith, he reiterated just how helpful chat bots can be in a time of uncertainty such as the COVID-19 pandemic. “The pandemic is a more strategic time than ever for bots!” he noted. We’re praising God for it today.”
John Thomas (pseudonym) is a freelance writer and missionary. His writing has appeared at Christ and Pop Culture, Christianity Today, and Desiring God.
EMQ, Volume 57, Issue 1. Copyright © 2021 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.
[1] From an interview with Smith in March 2020 conducted via Signal.
[2] From an interview with Gartner in March 2020 conducted via WhatsApp.
[3] From an interview with Meyers in March 2020 conducted via email.
[4] From an interview with Johnson in March 2020 conducted via WhatsApp.
